Civil servants are not supposed to care about the opposition. But the Labour leadership election keeps pulling us in for a quick peek. We can't help it – we worked with the male candidates for years and we know them inside out. We have been following the debates not out of interest but because they are like family. We don't really miss them but, like an eccentric uncle, it's nice to see them for a bit and hear about what they are up to.

Whitehall knows that a new Labour leader taking the stage signals the end of the phoney war and the start of the real campaign. Labour is a formidable campaigning force and we expect shadow ministers to go swiftly into combat and make an immediate impact. Until now, ministers have largely come through confrontations unscathed but after this weekend, facing an opposition with fresh energy, the pace will accelerate and the tone will be sharper.

Labour has significant advantages. First, it has the monopoly on opposition. There is no third party to distract people. Second, it speaks with government experience and former cabinet ministers know where the bodies are buried. Freedom of information requests will be a crucial weapon.

In government, Labour ministers detested FOI. Although it was their creation, they deplored the complex process for every request and its relentless use by the Conservatives to chip away at the government's credibility and expose the failures in the machine.

We expect Labour to bombard us with FOI requests and get their revenge. The coalition tried to pre-empt this onslaught with a data transparency agenda. But FOI covers all documents, not just data, and ministers ask to approve personally controversial requests and apply exemptions. Every FOI request is therefore a double hit. It steals ministerial time and can unearth problems and proposals that can be exposed on a quiet weekend to devastating effect. Is the government ready for the battle ahead? There are some serious weaknesses that require urgent attention.

The deputy prime minister is suffering. His cabinet office HQ is perfect if the intention is to limit his influence and impair his ability to do anything substantial. The Cabinet office is famous for co-ordinating everything but being responsible for nothing. It is leading the money-saving drive across government with an efficiency programme that is a Kafkaesque model of inefficiency. If the programme of electoral reform is to have any chance of success, the deputy prime minister needs a fully functioning office, advisers and a department that can make things happen.

The Downing Street operation is not sharp enough. Vince Cable's speech showed that they can't smell trouble. Conservatives were relaxed about it and the Lib Dems were delighted with the headlines. But everyone else was confused. Arguably, a business secretary who is anti-business fits perfectly in a government where the education secretary is trashing the education system, the health secretary is breaking up the NHS and the civil service minister is destroying the civil service.

But Number 10 has more special advisers than ever. Cohabitation with former opponents has dulled their senses. The outbreak of niceness has eroded their fear and they are no longer alert to danger. We are surprised at their inability to grasp the detail of policy and manage its impact across departments. The thinkers in the nudge unit are wandering around in a trance of long-term blue-sky thinking but no one is managing the hard issues that will surface next week and next month. Somebody needs to sort this out before it's too late.